In contrast to my previous post I wanted to lighten things up with a bit of positivity and it just so happens that this is about a Java application server (of the sort I was moaning about earlier) that in its latest incarnation is actually really nice to work with. Some boring history The landscape […]

Working with the new tech I’ve been working with Elasticsearch for a few different projects lately, and I thought I’d summarise some of my thoughts and experiences now I’ve come to know it reasonably well. I say reasonably because due to the potential complexity of the queries and infrastructural architecture you can use with Elasticsearch, calling yourself an expert […]

There is a lot of buzz at the moment in the front-end web technology world with frameworks such as AngularJS breaking into the mainstream of software departments around the world. However, bubbling under the surface there are some interesting developments going on in back-end technology, including new programming languages gaining some popularity and maturing. I […]

Until fairly recently unit testing is an engineering practice I’ve had little exposure to. It’s perfectly possible to get by developing without unit tests, but they do help with the design, verification and maintenance of code. A unit test is designed to test a small functional unit of code for a particular scenario. Generally multiple […]

Having some time for reflection before the new year begins really helps to focus the mind. After some thought, here’s a summary of some things I will be working towards in 2014: Put more effort into blogging to give quality Java software development tips, tutorials and information (read: you’re going to see some changes round […]

So SCRUM / Kanban / Lean is the greatest project management methodology ‘invented’, and all these fantastic advances took place within the last few decades? That’s just plain silly, the greatest single thing that makes process improvement possible is our innate ability as a species to do a little thing called reflection. Please don’t focus too much […]

Reflecting the nature of trends in web user experience, my work as a developer has led me to be quite involved in the field of ‘search’. It’s fair to say I never fully appreciated how important information retrieval / search theory would become in my career, and what ‘search’ is really all about. A few […]

At its heart CQRS (Command Query Response Segregation) is a simple design philosophy highly suited to certain types of applications such as those dealing with reasonable size datasets, or event driven user interfaces. The aim is to separate the infrastructure code from the application logic, and also the create/update/delete (command) operations from the read (query) […]

As is so often the case, the best solution is also the simplest. I’ve been developing a personal web app, using JSF 2.0 for the presentation layer. I’m used to creating custom Converters using the @FacesConverter annotation to carry out the conversion from String to Object format and vice versa. This is useful when the […]

Recently I’ve been using Maven for the dependency management of Java projects. When trying to build projects from the command line I found Maven had problems downloading certain files… it would stop at a certain point consistently and refuse to go any further. The fix I found, thanks to the ever useful StackOverflow, was to […]

Today is the beta launch of my hosted web app called meetingShed. It is a tool for scheduling and booking meetings (and other events) which uses people’s Google Calendar data to find acceptable meeting times. Some of the features include: Google Calendar integration Import Google Contacts Narrow down time slots and avoid double bookings based […]

KMS-dev, a platform for integrating SWI-Prolog software components with web applications has now been released as Open Source Software. The platform uses a Java based web service interface to allow communication with an SWI-Prolog instance. Logic programming is a powerful programming paradigm, offering benefits of decreased development time and increased code readability and modifiability. It […]

This is primarily written as a basic primer for those CMP students on the same course as me that are struggling and or frustrated with Enterprise JavaBeans. I won’t give any course work specific info, but hopefully this may help at least a bit. Firstly I should probably mention I have worked in a real […]

Google are fantastic at building APIs, but their authentication mechanisms (while I’m sure are very secure) are not always the easiest thing to implement. I’m working with the Google Data APIs at the moment for my project, for which an app needs access to google accounts, cue OAuth. Anyone who doesn’t agree it is difficult […]

Now that web applications require increasingly sophisticated user interfaces, nearly all web app developers have some experience of a user interface framework. Dynamic pages such as JSPs in Java EE and ASPs in .NET don’t allow for these richer user experiences. Delivering a range of features from simple text fields to full blown desktop – […]

A quick one to remember, more to save myself some pain when I forget what the problem was, but if anyone is helped out by this post then that would be a great thing too. Never try to invoke a method on a Java web service using the source of the web service, e.g: @WebServiceRef(wsdlLocation=”http://localhost:8080/blah/blah?wsdll”) […]

My new task management / to do list android app, Organisa Lite, has a few features I think some people will like: Organise all your notes in a unique tree-like hierarchy An innovative user interface where everything is managed from one screen – no clumsy flicking between multiple menus to get things done Put notes under […]

Firstly, in comparison to most other big tech companies google are great at helping developers get the most out of their APIs and software development kits. They obviously try quite hard to make developing applications using their technologies as straightforward as possible. However some of the features they do implement such as virtual testing environments, while […]

Well, from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow… I really should be asleep, but here’s a screenshot of my new Android tablet (an EKEN M-001) running my first Android application. I will leave any comments on the development SDK till later. Generally seems quite painless to write small applications, complying with Android standard app architecture […]

I have just launched a new website to use as a space for posting information related to the Knowledge Management Environment Specification which I am working on under the organisation name - Intelligent Architectures. It seemed convenient to have an area to publish material related to this project and other similar ventures which have more scope […]